Pinterest Challenge: Ombre Style Paper Lanterns

Happy Pinterest Challenge Day! It seems like I’ve been waiting for this day all year when really it was only a couple of months ago that I completed the last challenge. You can see it here. First and foremost, let me thank the lovely ladies that put this together, Kate from Centsational Girl, Michelle of Ten June,  Katie of Bower Power, and Sherry from Younghouselove.

I decided this year to do something about a recent illness I’ve been dealing with known as “Ombre Obsession.” Oh, it’s serious all right. You can see some of the sickness coming out right into my pinterest board:

You can also follow all of Compartment Life’s pinterest boards here (email if you need an invite!). Anyways, so I took a loose interpretation of the ombre style and wanted to apply it to my Chinese star lanterns I had. I purchased two of them in China Town in California, and had them hanging up with the light kits and all in my first college apartment. I think someone thought I was collecting them and I received one more for a birthday present. For a long time they sat under my bed in my last apartment. However, when I moved to my condo, my mother helped me unpack most of my room and she took them out of the box. She put them on the window sill and there they have stayed. Not matching, without lights, and kinda sitting in a random spot.

I took a picture of them on the stairs too, I think I needed a chance to say good-bye to the flashy colors….NOT.

I took them outside and spray painted them. I had a few colors of spay paint built up but I was leaning towards using gray, gold (not pictured because it was drippy), purple, black, and white.

I landed on finishing two stars in the Rust-oleum gloss purple and one of them in the Rust-oleum winter gray. Since they were so busy with all the colors on them it definitely took several coats to cover them completely. This is after four or five light coats and you can still see the pattern through the spray paint.

I left them outside to dry, and since it’s Texas and it’s hot, it was almost too humid for them to dry completely. I love though, that you can still see some of the texture of the indents of the tissue paper in them.

Luckily, they finally did. So, on to the ombre portion of this project. I had this vision for a light graduation of colors coming from the points of each star. My first plan was to go with gold on the purple and white on the gray. Well…..things don’t always go as planned…..

To put it nicely, I was less than pleased. I thought they looked hokey and somewhat childish. Not to mention, I had a slip of the hand and got a huge spritz of gold in the center of the star. Then when I tried to do the white on the gray star, it was almost impossible to see.

So, back to square one I went. I stood there in the blazing heat thinking for a moment and realized I had an even darker gray spray paint in my little brood of spay paint cans. It was actually meant to be primer for one of my next projects, but I decided to work with what I had. I thought maybe it would show up against the light gray star better than the white paint had.. Wouldn’t you know? It looked awesome!

I took it and ran with it (and repainted the purple star with the gold back to purple) and did the tips of the other two purple stars with the dark gray as well.

It’s a little hard to tell in the pictures, but the fading of the dark gray onto the light gray looks perfect! I took a close up of the tip of the gray star so you could see it a little better.

After the tips finished drying for a day or so I brought them back to their original resting place in my room. I hung them up over my window seat to the right of my bed.

Here’s a close up of the action.

And another angle.

I even tried to get a shot of them from looking up directly underneath them. Actually, from this angle you can see the wear and tear I’ve put on them, there’s a rather large rip in the gray star and the tissue paper from one the purple stars is torn. Without this angle though it’s really hard to notice the imperfections .

I just love the little vignette that the stars create next to my bed. It’s like a whole new moment in my room.

Can’t wait for next year! Thanks again for being part of the pinterest challenge! I would love to see your pinterest project as well so please feel free to leave a link below to your Pinterest Challenge in the comments section!